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Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Rosemary Focaccia

I have been thinking to make Rosemary Focaccia long time ago, as I like those Western style of savoury bread e.g baguette,croissant, bagels & etc. But my family members prefer those Asian style of sweet and soft bread..So i have to halve the recipe when I baked this Rosemary Focaccia yesterday.

Surprised that my kids love this Focaccia even Desmond said" Mummy, this bread is very nice". I baked this Rosemary Focaccia in last minutes since I have balance fresh Rosemary herbs from the Rosemary Chicken that I prepared for yesterday dinner. Learnt more about Foccacia from here.

This is the Rosemary Focaccia before put into hot oven. I adapted this recipe from my blogger friend Swee San (We had just meet up last Sat), Thanks to Swee San for kind sharing of this yummy recipe.

Method
1. Mix flour, yeast and salt together in a large mixing bowl. Stir in warm water and olive oil and mix thoroughly until the dough comes away cleanly from the side of the bowl.
2. Tip the dough out on to a lightly floured work surface and knead until smooth and springy (about 10 minutes). – I used KA mixer and it took about 5mins.
3. Oil a bowl and put in the dough. Cover with a damp cloth and set aside in a warm place to rise for 1 hour.
4. When the dough has almost doubled in volume, tip it on to a baking pan, slightly greased, and spread it into a thick slab with your fingertips. Cover with a damp cloth and set aside for further 30 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 200 C. Place a roasting tin half full of hot water in the bottom of the oven. To fill the oven with steam, give the tin a little shake as the bread goes in to bake. The steam will stop the crusts on the loaves cracking.
6. When the dough has risen again, make little pits all over the surface with your fingertips. Brush the top with thinned honey and press in rosemary, press in olives if you like. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle over sea salt.
7. Bake at 200C for 30mins.

** try to eat Focaccia bread together with the roasted Rosemary herbs, it tasted so fragrant with Rosemary aroma !! Yummy !!

Hi Sonia, I baked this bread yesterday to go with soup and my family simply loved it! Thanks for sharing such a wonderful recipe. However, the base of the bread is not brown or crispy at all so am I supposed to bake longer? The top of my bread was already browned after 10mins and it was also fully baked so I took it out of the oven. If I were to bake it longer, will it dry out the bread and make it hard? Thanks!

teo ai li, the recipe was based on my old small oven, so you have to adjust the oven temp to suit your type of oven. You can turn on Fan forced and bake at 190C as fan forced create good air circulation so the bottom will brown too. If you noticed top has brown faster, then cover with foil.